Social Thinking to Help Kids with Autism

Laura Shumaker, writer and mother of a 23-year old son with autism, was asked by her son to help him meet some “nice girls”. She decided to interview Michelle Garcia Winner, an expert in the field of social relations and children with autism. Winner describes her work as Social Thinking—a way to observe ourselves and others as we move through various social situations and consider what we would like the outcomes to be.

Winner began considering the concept of Social Thinking while she was a speech and language pathologist, “to teach students, who have social-cognitive learning challenges (those with high-functioning autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD, nonverbal learning disability or those still undiagnosed) how to think socially to help guide which social skills they can choose to use in varying situations."